Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Loo Books

A selection of books have been arriving of a particular genre and I've piled them all together and waited until I was sitting down for long enough to look at them all in one go.These are loo books and no, I wasn't expecting to spend three hours sitting there reading them but all the same the time would have passed quickly if I had been.Rules Britannia by Rohan Candappa (Ebury Press) one of the funniest books you'll read in a long time.The 101 essential questions of Britishness answered and suddenly you realise what a complete mystery this country must be to newcomers and visitors alikeWhich comedy catch phrases should I know? I'm not going to say a word but I bet you come up with them all in commentsWhere should I join a queue?Which sport did the British invent and can still beat the world at?You have an unspecified number of eggs but only one basket,. How many of the eggs should you keep in that basket?Who or what is really there in a 'knock-knock' joke?What is the best biscuit to dunk in a cup of tea?Who ate all the pies? Finally I understand football chants.But here's one of my favourites and it's number 57Where is the best place in Britain to go for free, existential advice?

"The best place to go is Embankment tube station on the Northern Line of London's Underground system.You can be either on a train or the platform. But you need to be in a position when the train pulls to a halt and the doors of the carriage open. Then you will hear the elegant, profound and eternally relevant, advice:'Mind The Gap. Mind the Gap.'London Underground levies no charge for these words of wisdom."

This book gets funnier and funnier and there'll be much chortling from the convenience, mark my words and you'll also finally sort out that Dambusters thing about turning your hands into goggles while you sing Derrr, der, der, derr, de-de, der der.Go on, you know you want to, no one's watching.French Letters and the English Canon by Mark Daniel (Timewell Press) will arm you cap a pie with a cachet of all those mots juste that have been enveigled into the English language.This is one of those lovely little books that will make you sound very clever very quickly and personally I'm delighted to have finally really nailed la difference between the romans, a clef, a these, fleuve and policier and I'm afraid you'll have to decide for yourselves where the accents go because Typepad doesn't do French so me, I'm sans peur et sans reproche about that.You could go into la toilette a complete idiot and come out a French speaking savant but mind the bidet because that means pony.There's useful.Touch Me, I'm Sick, The 52 creepiest Love Songs you've ever heard of by Tom Reynolds (Piatkus) had me in stitches, all these books are very funny reads and to be honest if I'd written that 10cc song We're Not in Love I'd be mortified had it not been for the fact it must have made Eric and Graham so much money they probably couldn't care less"The preceding blanket of nebulous white noise comes courtesy of a group who over-dubbed their voices 100, 000 times so that they could duplicate the sound of condemned souls moaning inside a darkened monastery while the monks were outside playing Frisbee.....one of the most mind-blowing creepy hit singles of the last millenium"Muskrat Love and Afternoon Delight don't come out of it all too well either .Love the song as I may have done, when Tom analyses the words you suddenly do wonder why Every Breath You Take is on the Top Ten list of favourite songs for weddings and funerals, "it's about a stalker ferchrissakes" says Tom and do you know he's right.What was Sting thinking of ? Or perhaps it's best not to know.This book will certainly have you sat in the smallest room singing.Finally Delete This at Your Peril by Bob Servant Ed by Neil Forsyth ( Aurum Press) One man's fearless exchange with the internet spammers. Bob is offered lost African millions, Russian brides and many a get-rich-quick scam mostly in return for his bank account number but he counters it all with madness of his own.No way is Bob going to add to the £150 million conned from Britons in 2006 alone and several spammers likely to be canned and wishing they'd never started by the time Bob has finished with them.Bob a cheesburger magnate turned window cleaner from Broughty Ferry, Dundee who had his ladders " nicked by gypsies" and that was the end of that.All in all a brilliant selection of books and all you need now is the time to sit and read them.

Comments

Loo Books

A selection of books have been arriving of a particular genre and I've piled them all together and waited until I was sitting down for long enough to look at them all in one go.These are loo books and no, I wasn't expecting to spend three hours sitting there reading them but all the same the time would have passed quickly if I had been.Rules Britannia by Rohan Candappa (Ebury Press) one of the funniest books you'll read in a long time.The 101 essential questions of Britishness answered and suddenly you realise what a complete mystery this country must be to newcomers and visitors alikeWhich comedy catch phrases should I know? I'm not going to say a word but I bet you come up with them all in commentsWhere should I join a queue?Which sport did the British invent and can still beat the world at?You have an unspecified number of eggs but only one basket,. How many of the eggs should you keep in that basket?Who or what is really there in a 'knock-knock' joke?What is the best biscuit to dunk in a cup of tea?Who ate all the pies? Finally I understand football chants.But here's one of my favourites and it's number 57Where is the best place in Britain to go for free, existential advice?

"The best place to go is Embankment tube station on the Northern Line of London's Underground system.You can be either on a train or the platform. But you need to be in a position when the train pulls to a halt and the doors of the carriage open. Then you will hear the elegant, profound and eternally relevant, advice:'Mind The Gap. Mind the Gap.'London Underground levies no charge for these words of wisdom."

This book gets funnier and funnier and there'll be much chortling from the convenience, mark my words and you'll also finally sort out that Dambusters thing about turning your hands into goggles while you sing Derrr, der, der, derr, de-de, der der.Go on, you know you want to, no one's watching.French Letters and the English Canon by Mark Daniel (Timewell Press) will arm you cap a pie with a cachet of all those mots juste that have been enveigled into the English language.This is one of those lovely little books that will make you sound very clever very quickly and personally I'm delighted to have finally really nailed la difference between the romans, a clef, a these, fleuve and policier and I'm afraid you'll have to decide for yourselves where the accents go because Typepad doesn't do French so me, I'm sans peur et sans reproche about that.You could go into la toilette a complete idiot and come out a French speaking savant but mind the bidet because that means pony.There's useful.Touch Me, I'm Sick, The 52 creepiest Love Songs you've ever heard of by Tom Reynolds (Piatkus) had me in stitches, all these books are very funny reads and to be honest if I'd written that 10cc song We're Not in Love I'd be mortified had it not been for the fact it must have made Eric and Graham so much money they probably couldn't care less"The preceding blanket of nebulous white noise comes courtesy of a group who over-dubbed their voices 100, 000 times so that they could duplicate the sound of condemned souls moaning inside a darkened monastery while the monks were outside playing Frisbee.....one of the most mind-blowing creepy hit singles of the last millenium"Muskrat Love and Afternoon Delight don't come out of it all too well either .Love the song as I may have done, when Tom analyses the words you suddenly do wonder why Every Breath You Take is on the Top Ten list of favourite songs for weddings and funerals, "it's about a stalker ferchrissakes" says Tom and do you know he's right.What was Sting thinking of ? Or perhaps it's best not to know.This book will certainly have you sat in the smallest room singing.Finally Delete This at Your Peril by Bob Servant Ed by Neil Forsyth ( Aurum Press) One man's fearless exchange with the internet spammers. Bob is offered lost African millions, Russian brides and many a get-rich-quick scam mostly in return for his bank account number but he counters it all with madness of his own.No way is Bob going to add to the £150 million conned from Britons in 2006 alone and several spammers likely to be canned and wishing they'd never started by the time Bob has finished with them.Bob a cheesburger magnate turned window cleaner from Broughty Ferry, Dundee who had his ladders " nicked by gypsies" and that was the end of that.All in all a brilliant selection of books and all you need now is the time to sit and read them.

Constants...

Team Tolstoy

Team TolstoyA year-long shared read of War & Peace through the centenary year of Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy's death, starting on his birthday, September 9th 2010.
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